


The Dice Was Loaded From The Start

by inlovewithnight



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-21
Updated: 2007-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	The Dice Was Loaded From The Start

He’s a soldier, for all that he’s left his uniform behind. Not the kind of thing you can take off with your clothes, not really. Gets down in you, in the blood and bone and gristle. To get rid of it you’d have to be able to shed your skin, and that takes a special type, doesn’t it. Snakes can do it, cold-blooded things that live down in the dust. Not our boy here, who reaches up for the sky and sun so much they named him after it.

He is a boy, too, for all that he’s loved and lost and the rest, for all that he’s old enough to have kids of his own if the notion of it didn’t scare the shit out of him. Got this innocence. Thinks the right thing is still out there, just out of reach, and if he tries hard enough he can find it, do it, be rewarded for it. It’s a little kid’s way of thinking and it’s a special thing that life hasn’t beaten that out of him yet.

Take the word ‘special’ any way you’re so inclined. I would.

It’s more fun than anything else there’s left to do out here in deep space, chasing myths and legends and trying to kill ghosts with words. Bending him left and right with stories, cryptic remarks, a laugh or a smile. Looking him in the eye when he talks. Handing him a paper and asking for his frakking _opinion_. It’s like gentling a horse, is what it is; step slow, keep the voice low and soothing, careful with the eye contact, and before you know it he’s come up and pressed his nose to your hand, and then it’s bit and bridle and riding away for the roses.

He thinks this can end _well_ , and it kills me not to laugh right in his face. Not that he knows it, because that snake I mentioned before, that’s me. I grow and shed skins easy as men like him breathe, easy as men like his father curse and yell, easy as women like that pilot girl he loved drew blokes to her and burned them up. Today I’m a lawyer, and a righteous man defending the black-soulled guilty, and I’ll play this part to the bloody hilt for as long as it’s giving up the goods. And then I’ll turn my face and go out again. Plenty of places for a man like me, even when all the worlds shrink down to what we’ve got left in this fleet. Always plenty of places.

I could ask him what he thinks this good ending is going to be. Baltar getting off? Walking out of that courtroom a free man, and taking a bullet right between the eyes from some vigilante touched by the spirit of justice? It’s happened before. On this very ship, as I recall the wireless whispers say, and more than once at that. Baltar being convicted? Going out the airlock, and the boy and I being left with the black marks on our names for sitting at Baltar’s table, and nothing to show for it? I can turn my face and fade away. The boy’s likely to drink himself stupid and eat his gun. That’s the only way out of your skin when you’re stuck there.

I don’t ask him that, though. No point. No need. Tells himself stories, this boy does. Stories where the things he does are going to have a purpose in the end, come to a stirring conclusion, where it’s not all just random chance and life’s little barbs and stings. A dreamer, this one, though he’d deny it to the end of him. I can see him at his grandpa’s knee, waiting for the praise, waiting to be told he’s good. Waiting for daddy to come round and tell him the same.

I could tell him his dad’s not going to be coming round any more. The old man is what they call him, but he’s turning into an old man in truth, these days, one weight after another hitting him dead-center in his chest and beating the life right out of him. No bend left in the Admiral. No recoil. Nothing but his duty and his pride.

But I don’t tell him that, either, because why bludgeon the boy with truth when a few more nice little stories and lies will make him so much happier, bring him so much more neatly right over to where I need him?

He’s not a _bad_ kid. In fact, he’s more or less made of good intentions. The trouble, for him, is that we don’t live in a good world, and whatever lies his granddad told him, we never have. I let him tell himself his stories and believe what he needs to get him through the day, just like the Fleet and his father and the girl who died and that pretty little wife of his did and do. It’s what you’ve got to do with a person like him. If you’re any good at it, you can drop a few words or a picture into those stories here and there and nudge them where you want them to go, and he’ll walk right along like it was his idea from the start.

I think the lovely lady president knew that, even though the father and the girl and the wife never did. Think she’s a bit pissed that this time I got there first. Such is the game, Madam President. May the next round treat you a bit better. All happened before, all happened again, or so they say, right? Plenty of chances for everyone to take a turn leading the boy by the nose.

He thinks he’s getting away with something. Kid with his hand in the bag of sweets. Thinks it’s all very dramatic and shocking, thinks he’s doing what nobody expected. I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s doing just what he ought to do, what he’s been going to do right form the start, clear as glass. Saw it the minute I laid eyes on him, path laid out as obvious as that picture he had in his pocket. One nudge and he set off on down the path happy as anything. And now I’ve got him eating out of my hand.  



End file.
